Tuesday, November 12, 2013

A few weeks ago we went down to Paris to have lunch out on the patio overlooking the Bellagio fountains. After having a very pleasant lunch out in the warm sunshine we joined the tourists on the Strip and walked up to have a look at what new progress is being made on the Linq project. This is a new remake of the Imperial Palace into the Quad and a meandering street next to it leading to ‘the world’s tallest observation wheel’. The Quad makeover is completed, and next door is the old Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall which is also being upgraded.

Walking north from Paris we come upon Bill’s, at the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo. The whole wall is down along Flamingo, and a new parking garage is going up on the north side.

Next to this the alley which will soon house a lot of new restaurants and bars leads east to the observation wheel, which is taller than the one in London.

The Quad has been revised, with new colors and machines, but one long wall is still boarded up, which will soon face the Linq (or whatever they name that street)

Walking back to Paris we can see the work at the rear of Bill’s and the wheel. All of the construction struts are replaced with the final cables, and last week they started hanging the observation pods onto the outside.

You can get a nice view of the progress on a live webcame over at the Linq web site.

Rather than walk past the front again, where the sidewalk was full of street performers, we wandered into Bally’s where the casino connects to the Paris casino via a long shopping walkway. Bally’s still has its old retro entryway, with moving belts (well, not moving belts) and circles.

It was a pleasant afternoon, and always nice to pretend we are tourists without having to fly anywhere.

Friday, November 01, 2013

Last night was a rather uneventful Halloween. Here in Vegas it was a typical fall evening, dark but calm with clear skies and a temperature of around 65f. We live in a neighborhood without sidewalks or streetlights, and the houses are rather far apart compared to newer areas. Consequently we usually don’t get many trick or treaters coming by. Yesterday the doorbell rang about four times to groups of five or six, and as usual I bought several bags of candy (knowing full well that we would end up eating most of it) so we would drop a handful of ‘snack size’ candies into each bag or plastic pumpkin. So today we do have a big bowl of candy left over, along with a few unopened bags.

Last Monday was another typical day – a storm front was moving through, and we dropped from a Sunday high of around 93f (34c) to a Monday high of 65f (19c). It was windy – steady winds of 40-50 mph with gusts of 80, so as usual our patio furniture and trash cans were blowing around the yard and the bells were ringing. Over the years we have made several trips down to Phoenix, where I met B, and we’ve purchased eight or nine Soleri bells – these are cast bronze artistic bells that vary from about an inch to over eight inches high, with big triangular copper pieces attached to the clapper to make them rather noisy. We’ve got them hanging from the back cover and out by the pool, but have learned not to put them near the guest bedrooms because people staying over (read: our daughter) complain about the noise. Down in San Diego they were more decorative rather than sound producing, but here in Vegas we hear them all the time, and with the winds we had on Monday those bells were very evident.

We moved right from hot summer into cool fall with not much of a transition between. We have air conditioners that we use in summer to cool the house, and several ‘swamp coolers’ that we use when it’s only in the 90’s. There are two big coolers on the roof, and we haven’t turned them on since sometime in June. Last weekend I drained them and put canvas covers over them for the winter, a good indication that our heat is gone.

It hasn’t gotten cold at night, which means that our trees aren’t turning colors yet, though some leaves on the peach tree are yellow, and falling off. The tree itself still looks green, as does the big ash in front of it.

The ash sometimes turns a bright bronze colour, it seems to have a little of that in the photo. The only yellow leaves are under the peach. The grape vines on the wall are just starting to turn colors.

Around the side of the house we have some hummingbird feeders, one is right outside our big new kitchen window so we can watch those little guys fighting all the time. One usually hangs out nearby and guards it, chasing off any others that come by.

But every once in a while they actually go over and drink some of the sugar water.